Steps To Becoming A Hospital CDI Specialist

By Jessica Collins


A clinical documentation technician usually manages clinical trials as well as service documents of a health institution. They ensure that there are accuracy and equality among the nurses, doctors, medical coders and other staff members. A hospital CDI specialist also maintains the charts, reports, medical records or any other form of documentation in the institution.

They are full-time workers just like all the other staff members thus they work during regular working hours unless there is an emergency. They usually work in clinics, laboratories or hospitals where medical trials are done on a daily basis. There are some requirements that a person has to meet to become a clinical documentation specialist.

The first requirements were attending a degree program either in nursing or clinical information technology for four academic years. The courses you will study will cover informatics, analysis, and anatomy, coding procedures, anatomy and other related areas. When you complete the program, you will attend internship for six months so that you can gain some experience.

You then need to obtain a license or certification. There is an exam that you must sit for to be qualified for the license. On passing the exams, the certificate will be handed to you, and its contents will reveal that one has been licensed as a documentation expert. If you do not obtain this certification, you are not eligible to get employment in the healthcare sector this make a point of applying for it. To add on that, the certification can be very helpful in obtaining work in other states as well.

Once you obtain this certification, the experience will be necessary for you to become a CDI. Therefore, you will be needed to work in nursing for two years. You can alternatively work in managing health information for the same period. Additionally, you can become a coder or an expert in documentation hence becoming the one responsible for safe keeping of all the health records in an institution.

After gaining experience in the nursing field or health information for about three years, you can now qualify to work as a healthcare documentation expert. Therefore, you have to be competent in your work and make sure that all the records are readily available when the doctors need them. Also, you have to make sure that the files you keep are up to date with the current state of the patient.

You can also decide to earn voluntary certification through the healthcare improvement specialist association. If you become certified by this organization, you can be very competent. Thus you may decide to advance your career. For you to qualify to take the exams, you need to show the experience documentation as well as your course-work at the college level.

You then have to ensure that your license and certificates are renewed from now and them to keep them current. The renewal, however, takes place after one or two years depending on the regulations of your state. Therefore, if you meet all the above requirements, you will be a qualified CDI, and you can thus work like all other workers.




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